Italian football giants Roma made history in more ways than one on Wednesday morning, setting a new attendance record for Italian women's football in their first ever UEFA Women's Champions League quarter-final against former winners Barcelona.
Some 39,454 fans flocked to the Stadio Olimpico in Rome to watch the Serie A Women leaders take on the Spanish champions, with Barcelona securing a slim 1-0 win in the first leg of the tie.
The quarter-final overtook the previous record of 39,027, was set by Roma's domestic rivals Juventus in their league win over Fiorentina in 2019, which was itself two-and-a-half times larger than the record before it.
It was a fitting fixture in which to break such a record, with Barcelona themselves having drawn 91,648 spectators to their UWCL clash against Wolfsburg at the Camp Nou last year in what remains the highest-ever attendance in the history of women's club football.
Barcelona settled into possession early in the match as Roma set up in two tight defensive lines, with forwards Valentina Giacinti and Andressa Alves attempting to capitalise on mistakes and play on the counter.
However, they were rarely able to move the ball into their attacking third before being flooded by opposition players, whose own transitional play down both wings through Norway international Caroline Graham Hansen and under-20 Women's World Cup winner Salma Paralluelo caused Roma all sorts of problems.
Spanish midfielder Aitana Bonmatí was a regular threat as she danced all over the park, while Nigerian striker Asisat Oshoala provided off-shoulder runs and physicality in the box. By the 20th minute, Barcelona had tallied eight shots to Roma's zero.
Just after the half-hour, the 2022 UWCL finalists finally broke through Roma's red wall with the pacey former sprinter Paralluelo scoring her first Champions League goal with a rocket from outside the box.
But despite Barcelona's overall dominance — including 69 per cent possession, 23 shots and 11 corners — they weren't able to add a second goal to their tally, with the record-breaking crowd giving Roma a standing ovation for their dogged defensive display, which kept their hopes alive in the return leg in Barcelona next week.
Twenty-thousand people also turned out for Bayern Munich's quarter-final against Caitlin Foord and Steph Catley's Arsenal at the Allianz Arena, which the German heavyweights won 1-0 thanks to a header from German international Lea Schüller despite a late fightback from the Gunners and some controversial referee calls.
These records are yet more proof that women's club football continues to blossom, with July's Women's World Cup expected to provide an additional wave of interest in domestic leagues across the world.
FIFA are projecting almost 1.5 million people will attend the tournament in Australia and New Zealand, with over 2 billion expected to watch on television.
Beyond the stadiums themselves, free-to-air broadcasting of the women's game also continues to pay dividends.
Media company DAZN, which broadcasts the UWCL live and free on YouTube, recently revealed that over 20 million people tuned into the competition's group stages this season, a 43 per cent increase from the previous edition, with millions more watching through its official platform.
Last week, FIFA President Gianni Infantino slammed public broadcasters in several countries for offering, in some cases, "100 times less" for rights to broadcast the Women's World Cup than the men's version, and said investment into the women's game would not be able to reach parity if other parts of football's ecosystem did not step up.
The 2023 tournament is the first to be packaged and commercialised separately from the men's tournament.
"Our ambition is to have equality in payments for the 2026 men's and 2027 women's World Cup," he told the FIFA Congress in Kigali.
"That is the objective that we set to ourselves. FIFA is stepping up with actions, not just with words. But unfortunately that is not the case of everyone across the industry.
"Broadcasters and sponsors have to do more. FIFA is receiving between 10 and 100 times inferior offers for the Women's World Cup.
"These same public broadcasters, who are paid by the taxpayers' money, they criticise FIFA for not guaranteeing equal pay to men and women. You pay us 100 times less, but your viewing figures are similar: maybe 20-25 per cent less for the women than the men, not 100 per cent.
"We need to all be on the same side in this fight for equality."
Tomorrow morning, Sam Kerr's Chelsea will face Ellie Carpenter's Olympique Lyonnais, while Paris Saint-Germain take on Wolfsburg in the UWCL's other two quarter-finals.
